PLAQUEMINE — Authorities arrested a group of current and former employees of a Plaquemine health clinic accused of accepting money during the past six months in exchange for obtaining fraudulent prescriptions for drugs used to make “purple drank.”

Purple drank is a slang term for a recreational drug concoction using ingredients of prescription-strength cough syrup.

The five people arrested Thursday, all current or former nurses of Prime Health LLC, a medical clinic in Plaquemine, are accused of calling in prescriptions for drugs used in cough syrup then selling the drugs for between $40 and $50 an ounce, Iberville Parish Sheriff Brett Stassi said.

The bottles of promethazine, a sedative, and codeine, a pain reliever and cough suppressant, ranged in size from a few ounces to up to 16 ounces, meaning those arrested could have netted tens of thousands of dollars in the alleged drug ring.

Stassi, in a news release, said more arrests are expected in this investigation, which is being conducted by sheriff’s deputies and agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Law Enforcement Against Drugs Task Force made up of Iberville deputies and Plaquemine police officers.

Stassi said the doctors at the Plaquemine clinic fully cooperated with the investigation.

The five people arrested Thursday and booked into the Iberville Parish Jail are: